Gloria Kisch

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Gloria Kisch (1941–2014) was an American artist and sculptor known for her early post-Minimalist paintings and wall sculptures, and later large-scale metal works.

She was born in New York City to German immigrant parents, Max and Hilda Stern. She earned a BA at Sarah Lawrence College in 1963, then moved to California. There she studied at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, earning a BFA and an MFA in 1969. Her early work included hard-edge, geometric paintings.

Starting in 1971, while living in Venice Beach, Kisch’s work grew more sculptural. Critics described her as moving from painting to wall-like sculpture. Her early sculptures were linked to post-Minimalism and compared to artists such as Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman.

In the 1970s she taught and showed work at Womanspace, part of The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. There she participated in Open Invitational and Female Sexuality, and led an extension program in sculpture in 1977. In 1973 she had a solo show at Suzanne Saxe Gallery in San Francisco, showing totems and hanging sculptures made from bamboo wrapped in silicone, plaster, sand, paint and other materials. She also debuted Wall Pieces at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. Kisch exhibited widely at California colleges and created her first large outdoor sculpture, Double Zero, at UC Irvine.

In 1975 she began regularly showing at Cirrus gallery in Los Angeles. In 1977 she made prints with Cirrus Editions, which were shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her prints are now in many museum collections. She had her first international solo show in Paris in 1976 and participated in the Biennale of Sydney. In 1978 she appeared in a landmark group show at Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco and had a solo show at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art called Zeu. Her first New York solo show came in 1979 at the Touchstone Gallery, presenting The Chimes Series—large and small sculptures made from rocks fixed to steel rods to suggest sound.

In 1980 Kisch’s work was part of a Special Projects Exhibition at P.S.1 in New York. She was named a leading artist in a 1980 ARTnews article about Venice, California, and she appeared in a film about contemporary sculptors. In 1981 she moved back to New York, living on Leonard Street briefly before settling on Broadway in converted lofts to work with heavy materials. The Milwaukee Art Museum showed The Leonard Street Series, a group of large drawings inspired by New York City, in 1981. In 1983 she presented The Gateway Series at the Queens Museum and at 55 Mercer Street.

Kisch began working mostly in metal in the early 1980s, creating “functional sculptures” that blurred art and design. She exhibited these works at the Soho gallery Art et Industrie. Critics noted that her furniture-like pieces carried a sense of utility. In 1988 her figurative sculpture Comrades was included in a Surrealism-inspired show at William Paterson College.

In 1991 she moved to Long Island. In 2000 she built a 40-acre studio, Three Ponds, where she welded and worked with metal. There she began making large metal sculptures resembling pond reeds, free-standing and wall-mounted flower forms, and later stainless steel mobiles called Bells that may sound when moved or struck. She continued to work at Three Ponds until her death in 2014.

Kisch took part in many exhibitions, including 1993’s Art and Application in New York. In 2007 she had a two-person show with Dale Chihuly in East Hampton, displaying her Flowers series. A monograph, Gloria Kisch: Fusion of Opposites, appeared in 2009, and in 2010 she had a solo show at Guild Hall in East Hampton. In 2014 her flower sculptures were shown at the Nassau County Museum of Art.

Public art commissions included the Big Apple Christmas Tree at Lincoln Center in 1987 and Octopus II in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza in 2002. Copper Fusion was shown in 2010–11, and Nagas was installed on the rooftop of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts in 2008. Her work has been inspired by nature, travel, and many cultural and religious traditions, and she described her art as spiritual and timeless.

Kisch had two children and two grandchildren. After her death, interest in her work grew. A 2019 catalogue, Immortal Flowers, accompanied an exhibition of her sculptures. Since 2021, her work has been represented by Salon 94. Her sculptures are held in numerous museums and collections across the United States and abroad.